Government Needs to be Put in its Place

By: Craig Chamberlain

When you get right down to it you can divide all of political philosophy into two camps: one believes that the state should control the individual, the other believes that the individual should control the state. Our founding fathers were in the latter category. The believed that governments were created to keep the peace, and maintain law and order among the citizenry, but beyond that the government should just stay out of the way. To quote Thomas Paine:” government is, at its best, a necessary evil; at it’s worst an intolerable one.” Or”government that governs best governs least” these are the main principles of our founding fathers and anyone else who believes that government should leave people alone.

The other camp disagrees. It’s ranks don’t include, Paine, Jefferson, Hamilton, Locke, or Adam Smith. They include Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, Sartre, Plato, and so on. If you read their theories you come to two conclusions. One, they waste a lot of paper to say the same things over and over again, and two they think that the state should be in control of the people. There are different reasons and theories, but it all boils down to human nature. They see people as so stupid, depraved, and vulgar that they- the enlightened- must take control and prevent them from running their own affairs. It’s all for their own good of course.

Now, it’s true that most people aren’t Einstein. I’m sure not. It’s highly unlikely that a person is a genius, or is going to win a noble prize. But here’s the thing: they don’t have to be. People are quite capable of managing their affairs without the government even if they couldn’t beat IBM’s Watson at a game of Jeopardy. But that’s not the way the progressives see it. They see it that it is there duty to take us out of the dark ages, by force if that’s what they have to do.

President Reagan once asked the American people “are you better off than you were four years ago?” the question, and the answer the American people came up with propelled him to victory. Let me put forth another question. “Are we as free as we were a generation ago?” I’m willing to bet that if I put that question to the American people a sizable majority would answer in the negative. Partly it’s our own fault. We kept electing the same crooks over and over again to inflict whatever they wanted on the people. And, for the most part, people ignored them. As long as the economy hummed along we didn’t pay too much attention to the dealings in Washington. It was only after we couldn’t ignore it any more that we demanded change and threw the bums out. We must put to rest, once and for all, the notion that there is no fundamental difference between the two parties. That’s one of the great lies the left uses to lull the American people into a false state of security. They know that the American people are not too interested in politics, and they do their very best to make the cynical and jaded to keep them away from the voting booth. The differences between the GOP and the Democrats couldn’t be any clearer.

With the Democrats we get higher taxes, more intrusion, less freedom, (a contempt for liberty when you get right down to it) and a weaker nation. Now, only a complete partisan would say that the GOP is perfect. It has its weak members and its flaws, no doubt about it. It’s too quick to compromise and too afraid of being seen as too conservative, too afraid that they will get bad press in the New York Times. Which, if they ever stopped to think about it, they get regardless, so they might as well go all out to really get the press into a lather. But only a fool would say that there is no difference between the GOP and the Democrats. No one can honestly believe that if John McCain had won the presidency that we would have nationalized health care, cap and trade, stimulus spending, and a foreign policy that no one can make heads or tails of?

The government has gotten so far out of control that even the left can’t control it anymore. They’re like Dr. Frankenstein who, after an initial euphoria at seeing their creation is alive, comes to the realization that it is beyond its control. They won’t admit there is a problem, happily saying that the best way to get government under control is to add more government? That’s like saying the best way to deal with food poisoning is to have a second helping of rotten meat.

The government wants to regulate even more. It wants to regulate what kind of foods we can eat, what kind of drinks we can drink. It tells us what kind of toilets we can have in our homes, it tells us what kind of light bulbs we can use for illumination. It wants to regulate what kind of cars people drive, it is desperately trying to put marriage completely under its control so it can redefine what a marriage is. It will take as much power as the American people are willing to give it, and it wants more than that. We must always understand that the Democrats and their voters aren’t just about more government, they are about making the American people less free. It’s up to conservatives to see to it that the GOP doesn’t end up the same way. All of the GOP candidates should pledge to not only reduce the size of government, but to radically alter what areas of our lives the government is allowed to get involved with.

Freedom requires a government that will get out of the way and a personal responsibility to use it in a sensible, responsible manner. It is time for American patriots to demand that the government step back into its constitutionally defined role, and if it refuses to do so, then it is the responsibility of the people to make them. America can’t go on under the weight of the federal leviathan any longer. We either reclaim our freedoms from the state, or we will lose even more freedoms to the state.